Hmmm. I tried again to find the hipster street west of the old city. But I went via the Lanna Traditional House Museum. This is an area of the Chiang Mai University grounds where there is a small collection of wooden houses from across many years, typical of the kind found in northern Thailand.

It was pretty interesting (not super interesting, because for each house there’s only a short paragraph about when and how it was built).

Obviously the houses were not all conveniently built in the grounds they’re in now, but it illustrates how (relatively) easy it is to deconstruct a wooden house, and move it elsewhere. I’m not actually sure if you can do that with a Huf Haus but still.

When that was done I thought about the hipster street, decided I was already too sweaty (very humid here the past two days) and went back to my hotel.

For there I needed to shower before my most important activity of the day: a 90-minute traditional Thai massage. Thai massage (I learned) is considered by UNESCO as an Intangible Cultural Heritage and ninety minutes of it sure did something tangible to all those muscles I’d grittily tightened during eight days of riding around Laos. It was so good. Normally I’d hate going to a fancy spa-massage place but this was lovely and good use of 40€.

Of course one can get a massage from any number of roadside establishments for a lot less but I felt I needed pampering and indeed I was.

Final night in Chiang Mai so nothing crazy this evening, just a nice meal (two dishes, actually) at this local place I like and the chance to talk briefly with a very solid piece of German manliness, who told me that while he was on Koh Phi Phi he’d drunk twelve beers and then taken part in an amateur Muay Thai fight.

Reader, I was smitten (but he was straight so y’know, I’m not married yet).